Fifth Edition

The adventure notes from the first time I ran Dungeons & Dragons read, "4 spitters, 1 starched opal." Rob's poor spelling only adds to the story of that short session, which ended early upon discovering the sample dungeon in the 3rd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide only detailed three rooms on the map. The adventure was a generic mess, with spiders and rats attacking the bard and barbarian. One rat went down in legend when it dealt negative damage to the bard, spawning a minor artifact that would appear in each of my campaigns, the Lucky Rat Tail (+1 to all d20 rolls). Of course, had we fully understood the rules, this never would have happened.

We were doing everything wrong, but we were playing DnD exactly as it was meant to be played. Just from that first day, we walked away with a pile of stories to tell.

Over the years, we figured out the way the rules were meant to work, advanced relunctantly-at-first on to DnD 3.5e. We played through two major homebrewed campaigns and countless one-nighters. We acquired more books, more dice (losing some along the way), and worked our way up to higher quality components. In a word, we became invested.

By the time 4th Edition appeared like some random encounter, I'd gone off to college and found a new group of players to DM for. I expected that my experience with 3.5e would be repeated with 4e, feigned disinterest leading to picking through the rules, absorbing piecemeal bits before adopting it altogether. Then I got the Player's Handbook for Christmas.

Here was something that read and felt and looked like it wanted to be World of Warcraft, which I had just broken up with for the first time. My beloved Dungeons & Dragons, with its rich beauty of unlimited possibilities, had become the game I hated for its failure to embrace options, cutting what could be millions of choices down to three - "What talent tree will you play?" I retreated into the warm embrace of 3.5e like a child rushing home to mother after being tricked by the older kids, my trust in the world shaken. I invested further into my "home" edition.

Word of Pathfinder found me eventually. All news was positive, but the key selling point compared this version of DnD-but-not-really to a mythical 3.75 Edition. This time, my disinterest wasn't feigned. The first time I opened a Pathfinder book was within the last year in a short campaign run by my roommate. I was underwhelmed and glad to have continued my investment in 3.5e.

I heard little of 5th Edition D&D (which returned to the ampersand in its anachronism) until May this year, around the time I sat down to finally finish Baldur's Gate, Bioware's great love letter to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. At this point, I was all but blind to the idea of leaving behind my years of buying into 3.5e. Then I learned something from this computer game nearly as old as my precious ruleset: The dice have too much control over the fun.

It was something I'd just run into as a player in Pathfinder and while running what will likely be my final game of 3.5e. My rogue had been the stealthiest bastard that ever was with his plus bajillion to sneaking around, but every three rolls was a natural 1, resulting in catastrophic failure. It was like the Predator suddenly decloaking and blasting Aqua's Barbie Girl.  In my last 3.5e game, the barbarian never rolled above a 9, nullifying her terrifying stats and rage.

Then I heard of Fifth Edition's advantage rule: Roll 2d20, keep the highest.  I loved this and immediately set to apply this rule to my games. This became the chink in 3.5e's armor, the sliver of opportunity through which my attention was stolen. When the preview characters released, I found myself giddy. Here was a beautiful layout of rules, and just from this single page, I could reverse engineer how Fifth Edition would play. The design was so pure, so utterly compact that I could understand the core from such a small glimpse. I had to try this, and the Starter Kit provided just that possibility.

I was sold from the very first session. The rules do their best to get out of the way and just let stories happen. By the end of the night, we walked away with stories of my blood-hungry dice and the power and terror of ambushing goblins, which still seem to have been the toughest enemy the party has encountered. The second session turned into a slew of tales, in which the party named their group the Chiseled Whistlers and the cleric turned a bandit to shimmering dust. The rogue would roll a series of natural 20s in the next couple sessions, saving the party while going on a murdering spree of the enemies he'd evaded. We're playing the rules right and playing D&D right - at the end of the night, we walk away with stories to tell.

So that's why I'm finally leaving behind DnD 3.5e for D&D 5e. The core rules are crisp and clear and most of all concise, keeping the game in the foreground as the rules take the backseat they were always meant to inhabit. The stories are at the heart of the game again, and though I'm leaving behind my investment in 3.5e, the "spitters" and "starched opal" and that Lucky Rat Tail will follow me wherever I go.